In residential home construction and remodeling it has recently become common to install wiring to provide broadband data communication access to the Internet. The broadband data communication may utilize cable, fiber optic, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) wiring, and the like.
It has also become common for residential homes to include a local area network (LAN) that connects to the broadband data communication access. Traditionally, a LAN in a residential home connected each component with a physical wire; however, residential homes are increasingly using wireless communications to connect some of the LAN components and creating a wireless LAN (WLAN).
A residential gateway (RG) is typically known as a hardware device that connects a LAN or WLAN with a wide area network (WAN) such as the Internet. The residential gateway provides port translation thereby allowing all of the computers in a small network to share one Internet Protocol (IP) address and Internet connection. The residential gateway may be located between the modem and the LAN, or a DSL or cable modem may be integrated into the residential gateway. A residential gateway often combines the functions of an IP router, multi-port Ethernet switch and WLAN access point. Residential gateways that include routing capabilities are converged devices and sometimes referred to as home routers or broadband routers, where “broadband” refers not to the router function, but the Internet access function.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) which is generally referred to the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP-based network. The popularity of VoIP is increasing as more consumers are adding an extra telephone line to a home or office.
A dual-mode phone is typically referred to as a phone which uses more than one technique for sending and receiving voice and data. There are currently three types of dual mode phones, mobile phones containing two types of cellular radios for voice and data, mobile phones containing both cellular and non-cellular radios used for voice and data communication, and wired phones with VoIP and plain old telephone service (POTS) technology. Thus, dual-mode phones are breaking away from being merely prototypes to being used both in wireless VoIP networks, as well as, cellular networks.
There is currently no solution that will enable fixed mobile convergence between wireless VoIP networks and cellular networks without upgrading the network infrastructure of either the VoIP provider or cellular networks. Thus, there is a need for a mobility solution that will reside in the residential gateway inside the customer's premises, and that will enable dual-mode phones to move existing calls seamlessly between a home VoIP network and a cellular network.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.